From the course: Interaction Design for the Web
Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.
Help doesn't help
- Here's a dirty, little secret about interface design, help doesn't help. What I mean by that is we often say, oh, we'll just write some help text to solve that problem, but typically the help we write isn't actually helpful, and people using the software don't tend to read it anyway. Typically when we write help files they're feature-based rather than procedural. They help for people who already know what it is they're looking for, but they don't help the people who don't even know how to start the task they're trying to achieve. For people to use help successfully they need a technical vocabulary and good search skills. That's a lot to expect from most users. Because help is in a separate file or system, people have to map it back to the interface. That's hard enough when you can open the help file side by side with the interface, but it's near impossible on mobile devices. Back in the days of Windows XP, the support team found that 20% of support calls were easily avoidable…
Download courses and learn on the go
Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.